Chapter 12
the canary sings
DEMYAN VOLKOV
“So Nicolai Romanov is there at nightclub,” Demyan Volkov muttered into the phone, trying not to growl. “Him and new wife.”
There was a pause, a too-long pause, of silence.
“Yeah, I’m trying to get video of them now, but they confiscated everyone’s phone except for John Borbón’s inner circle.
I have a burner phone, though. I’ll try to send you something, but if Borbón’s Gestapo security guys see me taking pictures, they’ll shove the phone up my ass,” the male voice on the other end said.
Such babies, these next-generation children. During Volkov’s KGB days, no one would have complained or explained why they could not do a task. They would do the task or suffer the consequences to themselves and their families.
“I need proof of Romanov’s wife,” Volkov said. “If he thinks he can fool me with fake wife, with streetwalker or substandard Slovenian escort, I need to know. I need picture for face matching.”
“Why would he do something like that?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Right.”
Because Romanov would not fool Volkov with such an easy deception. Volkov’s decades with KGB made him patient, made him meticulous, and he would not be fooled by an amateur princeling with no kingdom.
“I’ll do what I can,” the guy said.
This turncoat had called himself Canary when he’d been introduced to Volkov over the phone, not his real name. Amateurs who wanted a code name when they played at spy games irritated Volkov.
“You will,” Volkov said. “You will get me picture, and then I will pay.”
Another pause of flat silence.
Was this so ADHD that he could not talk? So much fucking silence.
“If I can,” Canary said.
“You will.”
And if Canary did not, Volkov had other eyes and ears in that party at Omnia nightclub that night.
He would get that picture, and by morning, he would know who Nicolai Romanov had married.
Nicolai Romanov marrying Volkov’s daughter was the lynchpin of the larger plan.
The proletariat were important, would rise up, if they believed in symbols.
The only symbol that oligarchs like Putin had was the whip.